Goals Update: 2015 Review
2015 is in the bag! Let’s see how these goals wrapped up. Another post will follow with details for 2016 goals! (Previous updates: Nov, Oct, Sep, Aug, Jul, Jun, May, Apr, Mar, Feb, Jan)
Goal 1 (Professional): Publish Five Seven Journal Articles in 2015, Progress as of Jan 1, 2016: 5 (71%)
Though five was the original goal (before I updated it to seven following a couple rapid publications that carried over from the previous year), I was still hoping to get to the new goal of seven published papers in 2015. Alas, I couldn’t quite get there.
However, I have two more (which are targeted at big journals), in the process to be submitted eminently (within two weeks), and another several in draft form. Since journal publications are generally cooperative activities, it’s not always possible to control every step of the process or the timing, so overall I’m pretty pleased with the outcome.
Having this goal be just a bit of a stretch, really boosted productivity from what it may have been without specifying it. In the future, I think a way to boost the performance on a semi-collaborative goal like this would be to either bring it more under my domain (re-frame the goal as X publications as first author), or to make the goal a group goal (re-frame the goal as X publications for the whole group in 2015). The lesson is either more direct control or more communal buy-in is necessary for goals of this nature.
Goal 2 (Fitness): Run 1000 Miles in 2015, Progress as of Jan 1, 2016: 1002 mi (100.2%)
Did it! Wrapped this one up on a run with Hillary on our winter vacation in Maui. Strava made a neat little celebration video summing up the year:
[video width=”1280" height=”720" mp4=”http://lukegmarshall.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/e1c5fede34585fd8a0244be626860de8.mp4"][/video]
Goal 3 (Fitness): Ride 1000 Miles in 2015, Progress as of Jan 1, 2016: 1,003 mi (100.3%)
Done since October, this one was a lot of fun. Strava also made a video for my cycling highlights this year:
[video width=”1280" height=”720" mp4=”http://lukegmarshall.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/46ed733744077956f2c5eb428e27273e.mp4"][/video]
Goal 4 (Personal Development): Read One Book Per Month in 2015, Progress as of Jan 1, 2016: 14 (116.7%)
Vacation is great for reading books! I was able to finish Boys in the Boat and Thinking in Systems before I even left. That gave me a couple weeks to also read the amazing Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates and the, ahem, slightly lighter Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore.
So to recap, this year I read (1) Consider the Lobster/Direct Translation Impossible (which I’m counting as one because I was halfway through each when at the beginning of the year), (2) The Black Swan, (3) American Gods, (4) On Love, (5) Cujo, (6) The Martian, (7) Ender’s Shadow, (8) Business Adventures, (9) The Character of Physical Law, (10) Forever War (11) Boys in the Boat, (12) Thinking in Systems, (13) Between the World and Me, and (14) Island of the Sequined Love Nun.